A lot of people think that only the content of a book is important, while the book cover design whether good or bad is not vital to a successful book release. While the book’s content is the most important for leaving a good impression to your readers, the book cover design is important to leave a good first impression to your buyers. If you are want to find a good book cover online, first you will need to know why and how the book covers work.
A good book cover needs to grab attention instantly, be striking, clean, beautiful and professionally made, but also let buyers know instantly the basic genre. Book cover usually conveys the geographical location of the story and the main character’s age and sex. So besides looking great, the most used and effective book cover designs have a main character, with a hidden or revealed face (it doesn’t matter), with a famous landscape or city behind them.
Then, to make sure readers know the type of genre immediately, book covers will have colors and fonts that match the general design standard for that certain genre. An effective book cover design will probably be very similar to other best-selling books in the genre. Not completely identical ( or stolen ), but “sort of like” other well-selling books in the genre, so that buyers can identify your book with other books that they have previously read and liked. They will subconsciously start thinking about other books of the same genre they liked. This is what pushes readers to buy a new book.
If you want to have a book cover design that will successfully attract the attention of readers, we recommend you check this.
Why genre book cover designs are so similar?
Most genre covers will always look very similar or pretty much the same. European thrillers usually have big and bold red font, a European city in the background and probably someone running. LA detective novels will have some blood, palm trees, and a gun. Vampire romances will have sharp and gothic fonts which will be mostly in black and red.
However, I do not think that is a cliché. Sure, when you put them side by side, there will be more similarities than you think. It is the same as when you are walking down an aisle you can see that all milk or coke drinks pretty much all look the same. You know what they contain and that you are in the right section. The same goes with book covers, you know in which genre section you are and if you are going to like it or not.
This is a simple emotional response to various colors, so why not use it to our advantage?
Some tips for your book cover design
- Highlight a single element
You should always use just one main single element, which can be an image, symbol, object or even letters.
- Size and scale
If every element on your book cover is the same, suddenly every element becomes insignificant. So, make sure you pay attention to the scale and size of your elements. Those elements that you want to attract more attention should be bigger while the other elements should be smaller in size and not as essential.
Nina Smith